It was in 1883 that Jewish American poet Emma Lazarus, disciple of Ralph Waldo Emerson, admirer of German romantic poet Heinrich Heine, and friend of English socialist artist William Morris, entered the eternity of literature by a unique door. A fund-raiser was being held in New York to collect money for the construction of a pedestal for the giant sculpture “Liberty Enlightening the World” by French artist Frederic-Auguste Bartholdi.

A gift from the French Republic to the United States on the 100th anniversary of its independence from England, the statue was to be erected in the port of New York. For this occasion Emma Lazarus wrote the poem “The New Colossus”, in which she walked between the millennial Jewish tradition and America’s nascent literary and social culture and praised the boundless generosity with which the new republic opened its arms to immigrants from around the world who came to be a part of the kaleidoscopic culture of the great country of the north.
“Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore, Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”,  proclaimed the Mother of Exiles, as Emma Lazarus called her in the poem.

The statue
The statue, inaugurated in 1886 and located on what was then called Bedloe Island at the entrance to the port of New York, would soon become one of the country’s most important symbols. From a metal plaque on the pedestal below the statue, the words of Lazarus initiated a dialogue with masses whose first words in this new world would be spoken on nearby Ellis Island, one of the primary immigration facilities of the US through which more than twelve million immigrants from every part of the globe passed between Emma Lazarus’ day and 1954 when it was closed.

But for these lovely verses, Emma Lazarus and her writings would be today only a footnote in history, as strange, curious, and difficult as the marvellous legacy praised in the verses of that wise and knowing Jewish poet of exoduses and diasporas.

What would this poet, so spiritual and impassioned, who dragged along with her the smouldering conflicts of race and nationality would say today of the walls that divided and still divide countries, or of the harsh remarks of her fellow Zionists whose cause she herself pleaded.

Migration
Never before has humanity been so aware of the significance of the process of migration. Though as old as humanity itself and a part of its history, to the point of having decided humans’ ascent up the ladder of evolution, the processes of migration have been freighted with economic, political, and religious motivations and laws that regulate and even block it.

With certain states imposing onerous conditions on emigration and others trying to close off their borders and ports to immigrants, the human flux today, stronger than ever, is greeted with intolerance, selectivity, and, worst of all, xenophobia.

As nationalism grows increasingly hard-core and furious, many hypocritical governments are trying to regulate or even block outright a solution that would be so essentially human that no law or wall could ever completely stop.
Hunger, the lack of opportunity, and the exhaustion that gives rise to fanaticism today drives great masses of people after the dream of a better life, or even just a possible life.

But in today's world no one is speaking the words of Emma Lazarus, no one is engraving them on plaques. To the contrary, some even think that this much lauded Jew shouldn't have stooped so low. Who today cares for the tired and poor and huddles masses from other shores? What rich and powerful country is asking for the tempest-tossed to be delivered to its shores? The golden doors stand in darkness and no one will light them, and yet, even so, the poor and downtrodden still find a crack to squeeze through towards a better life.

IPS - (The writer is a Cuban journalist.)